How the website is designed

This page gives information about the way the National Archives of Scotland (NAS) website has been planned to meet government accessibility regulations and to make navigation as easy as possible. The website has been designed to be accessible by as wide a range of Web browsers and computers as possible. Some parts of the site, such as the online catalogue and online school resources, are more complicated and may cause problems, but in cases like these we try to include alternative ways to get access to the information. If you have any problems using the site let us know using our feedback form.

How the site is arranged

• individual people carrying out research (Doing research)


• individuals or groups engaged in school or academic education (Learning)
• owners of private records, or record professionals, such as archivists, conservators, records managers (Keeping records).

At the top right corner of almost all pages there is help with navigation (A-Z index, Help and Site search).

The left side of the page contains useful commands: print this page, email this page and back to previous page).

Below this is a table of useful links within the NAS website and a table of links to other websites (usually those mentioned in the text on that page). In general the NAS website policy is to link to the home page of another website and not to link deep within that site, in order to prevent links becoming obsolete. The NAS website is managed by a relatively small number of staff and, in order to improve updating, links to external sites have mostly been excluded from the page text and restricted to the bottom left table.

The home page has been designed to provide several ways into the site and to allow the addition of quick links relating to topical issues or to very heavily used parts of the site (such as the online catalogue).